Of course, one of the highlights of each new Transformers movie is the introduction of a new group of robots in disguise, but with a few exceptions, the film series has carefully avoided the hiring of big name actors to give voice to those robots. Now, it looks like director Michael Bay is switching things up for Transformers: Age of Extinction, by hiring a pair of marquee actors to voice new characters. Listen carefully, and you might hear the dulcet tones of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe coming out of the mechanical mouths of a pair of good guy robots in the next Transformers adventure.
Deadline is reporting that Goodman and Watanabe will voice two new Autobot characters who will be introduced in the upcoming film; Goodman will voice Hound and Watanabe will voice Drift. Their characters, like all Autobots, will take their orders from Optimus Prime, once again voiced by Peter Cullen. Robert Foxworth, Reno Wilson and John DiMaggio also return to voice the Autobot characters of Ratchet, Brains and Crosshairs, respectively, while legendary voice actor Frank Welker, who voiced the Decepticon Soundwave in the previous films, will be the voice of the new villain, Galvatron.
Fun Fact: Welker was the voice of Megatron in the ’80s Transformers cartoon, but when the character died and became Galvatron in 1986’s Transformers: The Movie, Leonard Nimoy took over from Welker. Nimoy, of course, played Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Age of Extinction will find our heroes hiding from nefarious government types who don’t like having warring robots on Earth. But that all changes when a brand new batch of evil Decpticons arrive and start blowing stuff up in ways only the term “Bayhem” can do justice. The human cast includes Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Sophia Myles, T. J. Miller, Li Bingbing, Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer.
Transformers: Age of Extinction will be in theaters everywhere on June 27, 2014.